Book Review: Command and Control

How fortunate has mankind been that despite frequent and numerous mistakes, accidents, and misfortunes of varied kinds, we have never experienced an unplanned nuclear detonation either within the borders of the United States or in a foreign land that is over-flown with U.S. nuclear weapons or where they are stored? Damned fortunate indeed. Eric Schlosser admits that weapons safeguards have worked. But flaws in the system continue to exist. Nuclear weapons professionals have devoted and endangered careers fighting to point these flaws out. But here we are with nuclear weapons still on hair trigger alert; still reducing response, communication, and decision-making time to dangerously short periods that argue for a nuclear disaster and the creation of a future history making event.